scarred hearts
by kathleenfergie
Summary: "What's it like?" Emma asks quietly the night they defeat Zelena. "Having your heart ripped out." Oneshot. Emma/Regina Friendship. AU.


Just a short one. Regina and Emma have a heart to heart after Zelena and after Marion. Let's just like pretend that Zelena's death and Elsa's appearance happen the next night (or don't happen at all, whatever you want.).

I don't own anything.

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"What's it like?" She asks quietly the night they defeat Zelena. The two are sitting on the couch in the mayor's house, their son upstairs in his room. Emma stays because she wants to feel some safety for once, and she wants to give her parents privacy with the baby. She refuses to call him by his name. He is simply 'the baby' to her, or 'kid,' like she sometimes addresses Henry.

Regina is on the opposite side of her white couch, feet under her, resting her head against the armrest. She's exhausted and she has no idea what Emma is alluding to.

"What is _what _like, Miss Swan?" She's exhausted, and she has a habit of addressing her formally when she is trying to distance herself from emotion. Regina knows that Emma is going to ask something soul searching of her, and she'd rather not let it engulf her at the moment.

"Having your heart ripped out." She pauses. "Controlled." The blonde plays with a few strands of her hair, not meeting the queen's eyes. Her own feet are propped up on Regina's table, even though she knows the other woman hates things like that. She also hates cups that don't have coasters under them, dishes that aren't washed right away, and when Henry leaves his shoes on the stairway.

Regina exhales and is pensive.

"Like you're trapped inside a soundproof box with your hands tied behind your back." Her reply is quiet, but there's a dark tone in her rich voice that tells Emma she knows what it feels like. Regina looks at her empty fireplace instead of at Emma and exhales again. She's too tired for this.

"When Mary Margaret and I were stuck in the Enchanted Forest, Cora tried to rip out my heart." Emma had never told anyone but Gold that this had happened, and her mother had been present for the event and must have told her father, but in some way telling Regina a year later makes her feel guilty. "She stuck her hand into my chest and I felt it around my heart. I felt like I was dying but that it would never end." She shivers and wraps her arms around herself. She's still wearing her leather jacket but she feels the chills in her chest.

"Since we know that you're not dead, how did you stop it?" Regina asks, her eyes slowly drifting closed. Her tone is lazy, but she tilts her head toward Emma.

"I thought of Henry, of Storybrooke." Emma gave a small smile and Regina returned it. "I thought of my home and what I needed to get back to, and a burst of light sent Cora flying. It was the first time I'd ever seen my magic." She remembers that day in the sand, when she and Hook were still trying to kill each other. Presently the pirate is in a room at Granny's, where she was invited to join. Emma would go there later and crawl into his arms, but for right now she needs a little more time under the same roof as her son. She also wants to comfort Regina, after all that happened with her sister and Robin. "It's kind of fitting that I tell you this now, I guess. My first sign of magic, now that I don't have it anymore."

Regina's chest aches for Emma, a feeling she's had only a couple times for her son's other mother. Both her sister and her friend (if that is what Emma is) have lost their magic and she still has it all. It always comes down to her.

"My mother ripped out my heart right before I was to marry Snow's father. I had told her that I would never marry him, that Daniel's death meant I would never listen to her again, and she ripped it out of me and controlled me until the moment I said 'I do.'" Regina closes her eyes completely, shutting them tight to block out the images of her mother's smirk and the glowing heart hid under her robes. "The worst part is you know what is happening every second, but it's like the walls keep closing in tighter and tighter each time you try to fight it."

Emma thinks of the one spell from Harry Potter and she has internalize her chuckle at her own tired thought process.

"After she gave it back I never defied her. I wanted my heart to stay in my chest, never wanted her to touch it again." It's Regina's turn to shudder as she pulls herself up into a sitting position. Her tiredness allows her to be more comfortable around the blonde woman and in some ways it makes her feel strange. "That night, after everyone had gone to sleep, I snuck out of the King's chambers and walked around in the dark. I'd walked to the great hall where I'd been wed and starting weeping like a little girl. I was twenty when it all happened, so set on marrying Daniel, and then everything was ripped from me. Rumple always talked about how I needed control and in that moment I lost it all." Regina paused, reliving the moment. "I caused all the windows to burst; glass cut into my skin and tore apart my nightgown. My mother found me bleeding on the dais and she'd healed everything except for the scar above my lip. My mother said that she wanted me to feel my mistakes every time I kissed Snow's father." The feeling of the glass slicing into her was still a visceral memory, and she flinched.

Emma noticed the other woman's pain and reached across the sofa to grab hold of her hand, unfurling it from the fist she had made during her thoughts. The brunette gave a sad smile and squeezed back.

"I'd always wondered where that scar came from." Emma murmured, yawning. She pursed her lips as she recalled her days from the system. "I had one foster mother who would leave me alone all day with the little ones, even when I needed to go to school. She'd leave us with no food, and I had to sneak into the neighbor's house and steal it. I missed so many days of school that they kicked me out." Emma closed her eyes. "She was the one that caused me to start running away. I ran in the night and was missing for nine days. I was fourteen."

Regina nodded and sighed.

"Henry should be asleep by now." She told Emma, as if the known fact would urge the blonde to leave Regina to wallow on her couch. "You can go to your pirate, if that's what you want."

Emma looked at Regina and surveyed the brunette. After the huge commotion with Marion, Emma'd gone after the queen, who had stormed off, at first in anger at all of her misfortunes, and then in tears at the loss of Robin. Emma's heart hurt for the other woman, as she followed her into the cold night. She'd caught Regina's arm and said her name, but the brunette sobbed, covering her face with her free hand. Emma didn't know what to do for the woman, who wasn't quite her friend but nowhere near her enemy, but stand there with her.

"Why couldn't she have just been _dead_?" Regina had cried, her breaths coming in shuddering gasps. Emma knew there was no point in retelling Regina the reasons she'd brought Marion with her, it would only upset the witch further, she just stood there, her pale hands on Regina's forearms. Emma, who had rarely been comforted her whole life, had tried her best to soothe the crying woman. Eventually she pulled Regina's hand from her face and grasped it, looking into her tearstained eyes. "All my life the people that love me leave me. Why wasn't I enough for him? Why?"

Emma, now on the woman's couch, looked at her subdued and fatigued figure, making out the tear marks on her cheeks. A small part of Emma also wishes that Marion were dead, just so that she didn't have to be the one thing that kept working against Regina, even if it was unintentional.

"I'm sorry," she says quietly, looking into the flameless fireplace.

"I know, Miss Swan." She pauses and sucks in a breath. "I know."

The two women sit in silence after Regina's comment.

In the end, Emma does not crawl back to her pirate. Somewhere in their shared silence, Emma falls asleep on that white couch, waking in the morning to find an afghan draped over figure, and the sound of her son and his mother making breakfast.


End file.
